Quick and dirty summary

Arguments for how remote work is the future: more efficient, conducive to deep work, wider hiring pool, allows employees to live their lives better.

Notebook for
Remote: Office Not Required
Fried, Jason
Citation (APA): Fried, J. (2013). Remote: Office Not Required [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
The Time is Right For Remote Work
Highlight (yellow) - Why work doesn’t happen at work > Page 13
If you ask people where they go when they really need to get work done, very few will respond “the office.”
Highlight (yellow) - Why work doesn’t happen at work > Page 13
offices have become interruption factories.
Highlight (yellow) - Why work doesn’t happen at work > Page 15
The ability to be alone with your thoughts is, in fact, one of the key advantages of working remotely.
Highlight (yellow) - Stop commuting your life away > Page 17
According to the research,* commuting is associated with an increased risk of obesity, insomnia, stress, neck and back pain, high blood pressure, and other stress- related ills such as heart attacks and depression, and even divorce.
Highlight (yellow) - Escaping 9am–5pm > Page 22
The big transition with a distributed workforce is going from synchronous to asynchronous collaboration. Not only do we not have to be in the same spot to work together, we also don’t have to work at the same time to work together.
Highlight (yellow) - The new luxury > Page 29
The new luxury is the luxury of freedom and time. Once you’ve had a taste of that life, no corner office or fancy chef will be able to drag you back.
Highlight (yellow) - Talent isn’t bound by the hubs > Page 31
the fine print reads on investment materials: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
Highlight (yellow) - It’s not about the money > Page 34
Letting people work remotely is about promoting quality of life, about getting access to the best people wherever they are, and all the other benefits we’ll enumerate. That it may also end up reducing costs spent on offices and result in fewer- but- more- productive workers is the gravy, not the turkey.
Highlight (yellow) - Not all or nothing > Page 40
Remote work is about setting your team free to be the best it can be, wherever that might be.
Dealing With Excuses
Highlight (yellow) - If I can’t see them, how do I know they’re working? > Page 55
if you can’t let your employees work from home out of fear they’ll slack off without your supervision, you’re a babysitter, not a manager. Remote work is very likely the least of your problems.
Highlight (yellow) - If I can’t see them, how do I know they’re working? > Page 57
The bottom line is that you shouldn’t hire people you don’t trust, or work for bosses who don’t trust you.
Highlight (yellow) - People’s homes are full of distractions > Page 59
Most people want to work, as long as it’s stimulating and fulfilling. And if you’re stuck in a dead- end job that has no prospects of being either, then you don’t just need a remote position— you need a new job.
Highlight (yellow) - What about culture? > Page 74
Culture is incredibly important when it comes to loosening the leash. The stronger the culture, the less explicit training and supervision is needed. In an ideal situation, managers- of- one are allowed to roam freely, it being understood that they’ll do a good job— one congruent with what the company stands for.
Highlight (yellow) - I need an answer now! > Page 77
When everyone is sitting in the same office, it’s easy to fall into the habit of bothering anyone for anything at any time, with no regard for personal productivity. This is a key reason so many people get so little done in traditional office setups— too many interruptions.
Highlight (yellow) - I need an answer now! > Page 77
Questions you can wait hours to learn the answers to are fine to put in an email. Questions that require answers in the next few minutes can go into an instant message. For crises that truly merit a sky- is- falling designation, you can use that old- fashioned invention called the telephone.
How to Collaborate Remotely
Highlight (yellow) - Thou shalt overlap > Page 91
Thou shalt overlap
Highlight (yellow) - Thou shalt overlap > Page 91
At 37signals, we’ve found that we need a good four hours of overlap to avoid collaboration delays and feel like a team.
Highlight (yellow) - Forward motion > Page 103
At 37signals we’ve institutionalized this through a weekly discussion thread with the subject “What have you been working on?”
Highlight (yellow) - Forward motion > Page 105
progress is a joy best shared with coworkers.
Highlight (yellow) - Easy on the M&Ms > Page 115
there’s no such thing as a one-hour meeting. If you’re in a room with five people for an hour, it’s a five-hour meeting.
Beware the Dragons
Highlight (yellow) - The lone outpost > Page 132
At American Fidelity Assurance, they launched their remote-work experiment with a team they felt was a natural fit—a pilot group. They made sure all technology and infrastructure was in place before rolling out the program to the whole company. And those in the pilot group became “company advocates” for remote work, sharing their success stories with their coworkers. In doing so, they pointed out how much their productivity had soared from increased morale. (The gain was so significant that an open position was closed since it was no longer needed.) Give remote work a real chance or don’t bother at all. It’s okay to start small, but make sure it’s meaningful.
Hiring and Keeping the Best
Highlight (yellow) - It’s a big world > Page 144
With remote work, most communication is written. Many people who can get by with so-so language skills in the spoken realm fall flat when it comes to the written word. There simply isn’t much room for weak communication on teams with tight collaboration. You need solid writers to make remote work work, and a solid command of your home language is key.
Highlight (yellow) - Life moves on > Page 149
Keeping a solid team together for a long time is a key to peak performance. People grow closer and more comfortable with each other, and consequently do even better work. Meanwhile, rookie teams make rookie mistakes.
Highlight (yellow) - Keep the good times going > Page 150
the human connection is even more important when hiring remote workers because it has to be stronger to survive the distance. When the bulk of your communication happens via email and the like, it doesn’t take much for bad blood to develop unless everyone is making their best effort to the contrary.
Highlight (yellow) - Keep the good times going > Page 150
one of the key challenges of remote work: keeping everyone’s outlook healthy and happy.
Highlight (yellow) - Keep the good times going > Page 153
The old adage still applies: No assholes allowed. But for remote work, you need to extend it to no asshole-y behavior allowed, no drama allowed, no bad vibes allowed.
Highlight (yellow) - Seeking a human > Page 154
The last two years, our holiday gift has been a selection of curated traveling experiences, such as a trip to a cooking school in Paris or an outing for the whole family to Disneyland—all intended to promote memorable experiences with family or friends, new places, new skills. We’ve also sponsored the pursuit of a long list of hobbies and made sure that people get the time off to fit them in. Those hobbies include bicycle racing, whittling, trekking, motorsports, gardening, and many more. Sure, people working in an office have hobbies too, but few companies give their workers both the time off to pursue their hobbies and the financial support to make them affordable.
Highlight (yellow) - No parlor tricks > Page 158
you can ask copywriters to show you copy, consultants to show you reports or results, programmers to show you code, designers to show you designs, marketers to show you campaigns, and so on and so forth. This is an important aspect of recruiting in general, but it’s even more important for hiring remote workers. The main way you’ll communicate is through the work itself. If the quality just isn’t there, it’ll be apparent from the second the person starts—and you’ll have wasted everyone’s time by hiring on circumstantial evidence.
Note - No parlor tricks > Page 158
A reminder to iterate your interview process once again and focus on specificity.
Highlight (yellow) - No parlor tricks > Page 159
It’s the work that matters. Look at the work and forget the abstractions.
Highlight (yellow) - The cost of thriving > Page 161
Instead of thinking I can pay people from Kansas less than people from New York, you should think I can get amazing people from Kansas and make them feel valued and well-compensated if I pay them New York salaries.
Highlight (yellow) - On writing well > Page 167
Being a good writer is an essential part of being a good remote worker. When most arguments are settled over email or chat or discussion boards, you’d better show up equipped for the task. So, as a company owner or manager, you might as well filter for this quality right from the get-go. This means judging an application by its cover … letter. Yes, the CV might list all sorts of impressive stints here, there, and everywhere, but let’s be honest—it’s usually embellished and not a great indicator of how the candidate will perform for your company. No, the first filter that really matters is the cover letter explaining exactly why there’s a fit between applicant and company. There’s simply no getting around it: in hiring for remote-working positions, managers should be ruthless in filtering out poor writers.
Highlight (yellow) - On writing well > Page 168
On Writing Well by William Zinsser The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White Revising Prose by Richard Lanham
Highlight (yellow) - Test project > Page 170
The best way we’ve found to accurately judge work is to hire the person to do a little work before we take the plunge and hire them to do a lot of work. Call it “pre-hiring.” Pre-hiring takes the form of a one- or two-week mini-project. We usually pay around $1,500 for the mini-project. We never ask people to work for free. If we wouldn’t do it for free, why would we ask someone else to do it?
Highlight (yellow) - Meeting them in person > Page 175
In the end, we make the call on talent and character. It’s always a blend. If we offer them the job, and they want to work with us, we virtually shake hands and often invite them back to the office for their first few weeks on the job. This way they can get a bit more acclimated to the team, the culture, the faces, the names, etc. Once oriented, they can go back home with a solid introduction to the company, the people, and the way we work.
Managing Remote Workers
Highlight (yellow) - Stop managing the chairs > Page 182
Elementary, Watson. The job of a manager is not to herd cats, but to lead and verify the work. The trouble with that job description is that it requires knowledge of the work itself. You can’t effectively manage a team if you don’t know the intricacies of what they’re working on.
Highlight (yellow) - Lessons from open source > Page 189
Intrinsic motivation: Programmers working on open source code usually do it for love, not money. Often the money follows, but rarely does it take the place of motivation. To translate: working on exciting problems you’re personally interested in means you don’t need a manager breathing down your neck and constantly looking over your shoulder.
Highlight (yellow) - Lessons from open source > Page 189
All out in the open: Much of open source is coordinated on mailing lists and code tracking systems like GitHub. Anyone who’s interested in helping out can because the information is all out in the open. You can self-select into participating, and the people with the most knowledge about an issue thus get easy access.
Highlight (yellow) - Level the playing field > Page 192
Feeling like a second-class worker doesn’t take much. Case in point: a roomful of local people and a shitty intercom system that makes it hard for the remote worker to hear what’s going on and even harder to participate. There’s also the annoyance of having every debate end with “John and I talked about this in the office yesterday and decided that your idea isn’t going to work.” Fuck that.
Highlight (yellow) - Level the playing field > Page 192
one way to better your chances is to have some of the top brass working remotely. People with the power to change things need to feel the same hurt as those who merely have to deal with it.
Highlight (yellow) - Level the playing field > Page 192
When New York City’s subway system was plagued by crime and vandalism in the 1990s, New York’s Police Commissioner William Bratton forced his commanders to use the subway. When they saw with their own eyes how bad things were, change soon followed.
Highlight (yellow) - Remove the roadblocks > Page 198
Getting stuff done while working remotely depends, first, on being able to make progress at all hours. It’s no good twiddling your thumbs for three hours waiting for a manager to grant you permission, or hoping a coworker gets up soon so he or she can show you how something works in the remote world.
Highlight (yellow) - Remove the roadblocks > Page 199
you must make sure that people have access, by default, to everything they need. Most companies start out by adopting the reverse policy: everyone is only granted access to information and applications on a need-to-know basis. That’s completely unnecessary.
Highlight (yellow) - Remove the roadblocks > Page 199
At 37signals we’ve created a number of ways to eradicate roadblocks. First, everyone gets a company credit card and is told to “spend wisely.” There’s no begging to spend money on needed equipment to get the work done, and there are no expense reports to fill out (just forward all receipts to an internal email address in case of an audit).
Highlight (yellow) - Remove the roadblocks > Page 200
Second, workers at 37signals needn’t ask permission to go on vacation or specify how much time they’ll take. We tell them: just be reasonable, put it on the calendar, and coordinate with your coworkers. If you let them, humans have an amazing power to live up to your high expectations of reasonableness and responsibility.
Highlight (yellow) - Be on the lookout for overwork, not underwork > Page 202
If you’ve read about remote-work failures in the press, you might think that the major risk in setting your people free is that they’ll turn into lazy, unproductive slackers. In reality, it’s overwork, not underwork, that’s the real enemy in a successful remote-working environment.
Highlight (yellow) - Be on the lookout for overwork, not underwork > Page 204
from May to October, we give everyone an additional weekday off—more time to spend outside while the weather is nice and a good way to decompress from a hard-work winter. We also sponsor employees’ hobbies and encourage people to take vacations by giving them tailored excursions of their choosing as holiday gifts.
Life As A Remote Worker
Highlight (yellow) - Building a routine > Page 210
We’re merely suggesting that you demarcate the difference between work and play. Simply looking presentable is usually enough. One of our employees, Noah, likes to demarcate using his slippers: he has both a work set and a home set! Not everyone uses such props or even requires the mental separation they’re meant to create, but if you’re having trouble getting into work mode in the morning, try putting on some pants.
Highlight (yellow) - Building a routine > Page 211
you can use the layout of your house as a switch. Make sure that real work only happens when you’re in your dedicated home office. No checking work email or just getting a little more done in the living room or your bedroom.
Highlight (yellow) - Staying motivated > Page 221
Trying to conjure motivation by means of rewards or threats is terribly ineffective. In fact, it’s downright counterproductive. Rather, the only reliable way to muster motivation is by encouraging people to work on the stuff they like and care about, with people they like and care about. There are no shortcuts.
The Remote Toolbox
Highlight (yellow) - Staying motivated > Page 246
Know Your Company. If you’re CEO or owner of a company with between twenty-five to seventy-five people, and you’re having a hard time staying current on how your employees feel about your company, culture, leadership, management, workplace, decision making, etc., then Know Your Company is a godsend. It helps clue you in to all the unspoken realities of your company. This is especially important if your company is remote, since you see people less often and remote cultures are trickier to manage. Check out Know Your Company at http://knowyourcompany.com.
Dedication
Highlight (yellow) - Staying motivated > Page 253
For all those sitting in traffic right now. —JASON FRIED